Inuwa: NITDA–JICA partnership driving Nigeria’s startup revolution - ITREALMS

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The Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa, has described Nigeria’s collaboration with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) as a key driver of the nation’s technology innovation and startup revolution, reports ITREALMS.

Speaking at the closing ceremony of the Survey on the Digitisation of Supply Chains in Small-Scale Nigerian Farms, organised by AGROVESTO, a JICA-funded agritech startup and beneficiary of NITDA’s iHatch Incubation Programme (Cohort 2), Inuwa, represented by Dr. Amina Sambo-Magaji, Deputy Director, e-Government and Digital Economy Development Department, described the partnership as “a cornerstone for Nigeria’s socio-economic transformation.”

Qualcomm completes first year QMIA startup mentorship, opens 2024 season - ITREALMS

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The 2024 Qualcomm Make in Africa (QMIA) startup mentorship programme has opened for calls, just as 10 small medium sized grant participants have emerged, reports ITREALMS.

This is coming as Qualcomm Incorporated announced the completion of the first year of the Africa Innovation Platform, a suite of mentorship, education, and training programs created to support the development of Africa’s emerging technology ecosystem.

Endor Labs is CRN 2023 Stellar Startup - ITREALMS

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Endor Labs, creator of the Code and Pipeline Governance Platform, has been named to the CRN 2023 Stellar Startups list in the application development category. 

This annual list, previously known as CRN Emerging Vendors, recognizes fast-rising technology manufacturers committed to delivering leading-edge solutions that propel innovation and growth in the IT channel.

UAE’s Sheraa launches 2023 edition of Startup Dojo - ITREALMS

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The Sheraa Entrepreneurship Center, has launched the 2023 edition of the Startup Dojo, a youth incubation program that has been designed keeping young entrepreneurs in mind, reports ITREALMS.

The eight-week intensive training and mentorship program takes place every summer to enable young talent to develop their entrepreneurial solutions and gain real-world experience of starting and running their own businesses.

Access Bank accelerates startup empowerment with Africa FinTech foundry - ITREALMS

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Access Bank Plc is accelerating startups empowerment with its Africa FinTech Foundry (AFF) initiative, reports ITREALMS.

The initiative, ITREALMS gathered is set to empower emerging startups, with mentorship programmes, advisory and has committed N10 million in cash to the top three finalists.

First Google Startup Week Lagos attracts top UK, African venture capitalists - ITREALMS

ITREALMS: 

The first-ever Google Startup Week ended in Lagos, with some of Africa and United Kingdom (UK)-based top venture capitalists (VCs) on ground for exploration, reports ITREALMS.

This, ITREALMS also reports, saw the Google Launchpad Accelerator Africa graduating some 12 new startups from across Africa, and who pitched for funding,

Select alumni from classes 1, 2 and 3 are fresh out of a three-month Google for Startups UK Africa Immersion Programme in London. This is a 12-week immersion programme designed to bring the best of Google and the London startup ecosystem to tech companies from Africa that do not yet have a presence in the UK.

In partnership with Launchpad Accelerator Africa, the program aims to connect high potential early stage startups with the dedicated support of Google for Startups UK to help them take their startup to the next level.

“Every year, Africa’s economic growth continues to strengthen. Google for Startups has put its weight behind supporting the continent’s startups as they continue to build great products tackling key global social issues. This is an incredibly exciting space which is very relevant to UK ecosystem and investors,” says Marta Krupinska, head of Google for Startups UK.

Having completed their London Immersion, Launchpad Accelerator Africa Class 1, 2 and 3 alumni met with investors from the UK and Africa during Google Startup Week in Lagos to pitch for funding to take their businesses further.

Launchpad Accelerator Africa Class 4 graduated this week, as part of the Google Startup Week activities. Class 4 comprises 12 startups from six countries, addressing six different sectors.

Google Startup Week also saw participants from all 4 classes get a chance to meet, engage with each other, and share their experiences for the first time.

Class 4’s startups have collectively raised $4.3m, created over 300 jobs and signed up over 110 000 users. They had collectively raised in excess of $600 000 before the programme, and have been able to use Launchpad Accelerator Africa to scale their businesses to new levels.

“We believe Africans can solve Africa’s problems,” says the programme’s head of startup success and services, Fola Olatunji-David. “In running Launchpad Accelerator Africa we specifically look to work with startups with that share this vision. Launchpad Class 4 is tackling some of Africa’s most pressing challenges, including access to financial services, education, and agriculture.”

Since Launchpad Accelerator Africa was first announced in late 2017, the programme has worked with 47 startups on their growth journey. These companies have raised millions of dollars in investments, and created hundreds of jobs across the continent.

All the selected startups receive working space, and access to expert advisers from Google, Silicon Valley, and Africa. Participants also receive travel and PR support during each three-month programme.

The Class 4 startups graduating at Google Startup Week Lagos, in alphabetical order, are:

1. Afara Partners (Nigeria): Afara Partners offers platforms that provide services to the financially underserved/excluded.



2. BrandBook (South Africa): BrandBook is a mobile app that incentivises users to take a picture of their receipts, allowing it to harvest consumer purchase behaviour across all channels.

3. Elewa (Kenya): Elewa is a toolkit for establishing scalable high-quality training programs within existing education- or professional institutions.

4. Eversend (Uganda): Eversend is a multi-currency e-wallet that allows you to exchange, spend and send money at the best possible rates. It also includes insurance, virtual debit cards, and bill payments.

5. OZÉ (Ghana): OZÉ brings African small businesses into the digital era, equipping their owners to make data-driven decisions to improve their performance and access capital.

6. Phenomenal Technologies (Zimbabwe): Phenomenal Technologies offers low-cost field excursions for learners through virtual reality.

7. REACH (Nigeria): REACH recognises, categorises and interprets transaction data from SMS and other sources, making this data available as individual financial and market insights.

8. Sortd (South Africa): Sortd aims to re-invent email with the world's first All-in-One productivity suite for Gmail and GSuite.

9. TradeBuza (Nigeria): The TradeBuza is a cloud-based web and mobile application, which digitises contract farming and trade.

10. Tulaa (Kenya): Tulaa is an online-to-offline marketplace for smallholder farmers in Africa.

11. XEND (Nigeria) : XEND allows users to make and receive payments, offline or online.

12. WorkPay (Kenya): WorkPay is a cloud-based employee management and payment solution using the power of mobile and biometrics.

London Immersion Africa Startups:

13. 54gene (Nigeria) - African DNA makes up only 2% of genetic research material used in pharmaceutical research. Founded in 2019, 54gene is creating the world’s first and largest pan-African biobank.

14. Fieldinsight (Nigeria) - Fieldinsight helps to collect data in a structured manner using mobile and IoT devices. It then aggregates and represents this data through visualisations to help businesses make the best decisions.

15. Kwara (Kenya) - Kwara powers financial cooperatives with technology so they can meet their members needs instantly.

16. OkHi (Kenya) - 4 billion people across emerging markets do not have a physical address, costing economies $175bn a year. Based in Nairobi, OkHi creates digital addresses for people, which they can use (for free) to access reliable business services.

17. Paps (Senegal) - Paps is an African logistics startup focused on the last mile delivery and domestic markets, with strong client care orientation, allowing live tracking, intelligent address systems and automatic dispatch.

18. Piggyvest (Nigeria) - Piggyvest is an automated savings and investments platform that helps Nigerians save little amounts of money periodically, and then invest those funds for competitive returns.

19. PayGo Energy (Kenya) - PayGo Energy’s connected home gas meter links to a global IoT-based infrastructure for cooking gas delivery within high-density, high-demand urban communities — changing the entire cooking experience for households and unlocking access to clean cooking for a billion people.

20. ThankUCash (Nigeria) - ThankUCash is an analytics and rewards platform built to enable banks and businesses in Africa to acquire, reward and retain loyal customers.

21. Thrive Agric (Nigeria) - Thrive Agric provides farmers with access to finance, data-driven advisory and access to a market upon harvest.

22. Voyc (South Africa) - Voyc is on a mission to accelerate the world's transition towards customer-centricity by making it easy for companies to understand their customers.
Chuks Egbuna/EDitor
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Fintech startup, Zoto, soars in customer adoption

ITREALMS:

Fintech startup, Zoto, has witnessed a soaring customer adoption through transacting user base and order volume in the last one year, reports ITRealms.

The transacting user base and order volume, ITRealms gathered, grew by 56 per cent and 200 per cent respectively, in the last financial year.

Zoto, which is a product of Hedonmark Management Services Limited and Nigeria’s fastest growing payment solution, promises to replicate an even higher growth curve in the financial year 2018 -19.

The fintech startup, ITRealms reports, processed 5 million orders in the last year which is expected to grow 300 per cent to 15 million orders in the financial year 2018-19 due to growing volume of electronic payments by Nigeria’s young and digitally savvy mobile users. Zoto has scaled quickly with over one million downloads and an app rating of 4.6. 

Nigeria has one of the fastest growing population in the world most of whom are mobile and digitally savvy due to prices of Android phones dropping by as much as 45% and data prices reducing by as much as 80%. The accessibility to mobile phones and data has led to an explosion in electronic payments, with 117 billion USD worth electronic transactions processed in Jan – Dec 2016. 

Reacting to this development, Oshone Ikazoboh, Co-Founder & COO of Zoto expressed delight at the rapid progress made by Zoto with a short time.

“These milestones will motivate us to work even harder and achieve the goal of becoming West Africa’s preferred digital payments solution. In near future we plan to expand vertically and horizontally by adding more categories and increasing the number of merchants in each category, this will help us provide better payment experience to our users and make us an indispensable channel for payments,” he said.

Chuks Egbune/GEE

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Nigerian SolarKobo wins ITU Young Innovators Competition

ITRealms:

SolarKobo, a startup, invented by young Ogbonnaya Bassey emerged winner out of a pool of 124 applications across 34 countries in an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) organised Young Innovators Competition ITRealms reports.

  

Bassey is joint winner with Ugur Can Bastik, a young entrepreneur from Turkey who built TactiX, a tactile smartphone for the blind. They have both been invited to attend the Intel-sponsored in Budapest, Hungary between October 12-15, 2015 for an opportunity to pitch their ideas, participate in workshops, benefit from a year of ongoing mentorship, and win seed funding.

ITU Telecom World is a global event which brings together policy makers, regulators, industry leaders, SMEs and entrepreneurs to explore accelerating ICT innovations for social and economic development. The Young Innovators Competition is an integral part of the event which recognizes gifted young entrepreneurs who have ideas for innovative social enterprises, as a result of development challenges

SolarKobo, ITRealms gathered, is an innovation that will allow small businesses and families benefit from solar systems for relatively low monthly fees and will use single board devices for remote monitoring and customer payment systems. This will be achieved through the provision of solar powered systems with zero-upfront financing in Nigeria as a cheaper, more reliable and cleaner electricity source than the private gasoline generators which are widely used to supplement the insufficient public electricity supply.

Bassey said, “Most of the ingredients for our success exist. The need is critical, the demand for our solution is proven, the technology is tested and we have a sustainable model. We applied to the Young Innovators Competition to create awareness for our cause, get seed funding, investment, mentorship, and access to help from Intel in developing smarter systems.”

ITU Secretary-General,  Houlin Zhao, said,  “These talented young people have made great use of ICTs to meet a wide range of development goals, and their innovations have the potential to impact lives for the better. Start-ups such as these have a key role to play within our ICT ecosystem and I am very pleased that ITU Telecom World 2015 is providing them the global platform to showcase their innovations.

The Vice President and General Manager, Governments and World Ahead, Intel Corporation, Gordon Graylish, ITRealms learnt, said about the competition: “We are extremely honoured to be part of such a great initiative. We are even more impressed with the fantastic work from the young innovators. As a company, we are always looking to work with the brightest minds to make a positive impact, develop new technologies and make a difference. Part of this is creating new jobs in ICT and helping these fresh ideas to thrive. The brilliant ideas put forward – whether it is helping the blind to communicate in a digital world or encouraging more people to use solar power.

Cyriacus Nnaji/ED,OPs

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